It's not only the English underclass that has been indulging in a wild, self-destructive riot of late. At the other end of the economic spectrum, the financial markets are grabbing trainers and torching furniture shops, albeit in a much more grand, abstract and significant way. They, likewise, are counterintuitively trashing their own neighbourhood, which unfortunately is the entire western world.

Globalised free trade is eating itself. It was billed as a way of spreading wealth throughout the world, by out-sourcing jobs, so that back home we could benefit from cheap goods while simultaneously providing money to the world's poorest. Inevitably, however, those who would have been doing those jobs in developed countries don't even have the wherewithal to consume the cheap stuff. D'oh!

No one in power dares to say it yet – or even think it, probably. But the logical conclusion of what's going on – in Britain, where the south-east is the economic engine, in Europe, where Germany is the economic engine, and in the US, where China is the economic engine, providing the goods to Americans and also the money for them to buy them – is a return to more deliberately localised economies. Protectionism is a dirty, dirty word.

But politicians around the globe are swilling the word "localism" around in their mouths, and assessing whether they can get used to the taste.